does anyone here actually believe that the NSA can't already hack just about anything on the planet ? they are doing this publicly to not worry the citizens of their abilities but my guess is they already know exactly what is on this phone. hell, there are probably teens able to crack much of the worlds devices, you'd hope with billions thrown at them that the NSA could do it by now

mnymgr1 wrote:does anyone here actually believe that the NSA can't already hack just about anything on the planet ? they are doing this publicly to not worry the citizens of their abilities but my guess is they already know exactly what is on this phone. hell, there are probably teens able to crack much of the worlds devices, you'd hope with billions thrown at them that the NSA could do it by now

I'm pretty sure No Such Agency has let absolutely NO grass grow under their feet along the line of being able to do pretty much what they want regarding monitoring anything electronic. Encryption... I don't know, save that it'd be an odd nation indeed that freely allowed public access to encryption that their own security services were unable to crack.

I get more crackles, pops and snaps than a warehouse full of Rice Krispies; I'm relatively certain I'm being monitored. Ex-Army, ex-intel, registered Republican, NRA member... any two of those would have got me on the regime's unofficial official enemies' list to be monitored. Shucks, I'm surprised I haven't been hauled away yet.

They should have to get a search warrant. If there is information leading to another cell or group the government should know. Just download this guys information and put it in a zip file and turn it over.

Security worker here. Apple used to have this functionality. They then completely removed it from their software. FBI wants them to build a custom OS with the "backdoor" built in so they can drop it on the phone. This requires lots of resources. Apple may actually care about privacy and whatnot but really they're just saving themselves money. Also, it isn't really a backdoor. The patch would just remove the time limit between failed password guesses, thus making it easier to crack. Essentially if you have a strong password then it doesn't particularly matter.

MaxGravy wrote:Seems like they could disassemble the phone, hot-wire the memory and decrypt it. Is this not technically possible?

My thoughts exactly. I'd be shocked if they didn't have a way to pull out the hard drive and mount it into some adapter to read the bytes off it, with or without cracking the software on the phone. Even if it's encrypted, if they wrote the encryption algorithms then they'll know how to reverse it.

Silver: the Rodney Dangerfield of precious metals.

Be wary of he who would deny you access to information,for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

MaxGravy wrote:Seems like they could disassemble the phone, hot-wire the memory and decrypt it. Is this not technically possible?

Mcafee is offering to do this which is not hacking but disassembling the phone. It requires the phone and a few weeks in a lab,but the F.B.I. does not seem to be responding to his offer to do it for free.The debate is fraught with fear and dis information.They should have this capacity themselves if they were not just pretending to be competent or more likely lazy and or lying. They changed the password so that it could no longer sync and back up from the cloud which they could have Googled

Last edited by silverbender on Thu Feb 25, 2016, edited 1 time in total.

MaxGravy wrote:Seems like they could disassemble the phone, hot-wire the memory and decrypt it. Is this not technically possible?

My thoughts exactly. I'd be shocked if they didn't have a way to pull out the hard drive and mount it into some adapter to read the bytes off it, with or without cracking the software on the phone. Even if it's encrypted, if they wrote the encryption algorithms then they'll know how to reverse it.

That's not how encryption works. You can't just reverse it without the password. The FBI wants to be able to brute force the password without hinderances Apple has in place.

MaxGravy wrote:Seems like they could disassemble the phone, hot-wire the memory and decrypt it. Is this not technically possible?

Even if you bypass the phone and read the data directly, it will be jumbled nonsense. The only way to decrypt this hardware-encrypted data it is with the proper key, which is random and unique to each phone, embedded in the hardware, and can only be accessed be entering the password. iOS currently locks you out (or wipes the data completely, if the user enabled that feature) after 10 consecutive incorrect password attempts. Apple estimates that guessing a 6-digit password with these limitations would take 5+ years. An 8-digit password 15+ years. The FBI wants Apple to make a version of iOS that removes the 10 password attempt limitation and the data wipe option so that they can try to brute force guess the password.

Trying to break 256-bit AES encryption directly by guessing the key (1.1 x 10^77 possible keys) is not a practical option. Even if you only have to go through half of the possible decryption keys, It would take the fastest supercomputer in the world 917,326,310,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to do it.

This is our government we're talking about here. The same idiots that "lowered our healthcare costs" Whatever their stated "mission" is, the reality is the opposite. Our govt has proven itself useless time and time again. This is about control and nothing more.

MaxGravy wrote:Seems like they could disassemble the phone, hot-wire the memory and decrypt it. Is this not technically possible?

Even if you bypass the phone and read the data directly, it will be jumbled nonsense. The only way to decrypt this hardware-encrypted data it is with the proper key, which is random and unique to each phone, embedded in the hardware, and can only be accessed be entering the password. iOS currently locks you out (or wipes the data completely, if the user enabled that feature) after 10 consecutive incorrect password attempts. Apple estimates that guessing a 6-digit password with these limitations would take 5+ years. An 8-digit password 15+ years. The FBI wants Apple to make a version of iOS that removes the 10 password attempt limitation and the data wipe option so that they can try to brute force guess the password.

Trying to break 256-bit AES encryption directly by guessing the key (1.1 x 10^77 possible keys) is not a practical option. Even if you only have to go through half of the possible decryption keys, It would take the fastest supercomputer in the world 917,326,310,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to do it.

The "fastest" computers in the world are super cooled and use light (photons) instead of electricity for the circuitry. It's roughly the equivalent of going from horse and buggy to the automobile. The CPU can process 35 DVDs worth (1 terabit) of data per second. And that's what we know about in the public domain (albeit not retail), which doesn't take into account that the government keeps technology private for 30 years before it's released to the public.

So we could easily remove a dozen or so zeroes from that number, and a lot more if there are multiple CPUs being used for the task or even faster computers that aren't made known to the public.

I would never trust encryption to be bulletproof personally.

Silver: the Rodney Dangerfield of precious metals.

Be wary of he who would deny you access to information,for in his heart he dreams himself your master.